Beginnings
The bank had a rough start, including near bankruptcy during the summer of 1879 when six banks in the area had to suspend activities due to financial difficulties. On August 1, 1879, the bank would run into further difficulties when its headquarters burned down; however, the bank would go on to thrive.
On July 29, 1896 the Bank of Hamilton's first Winnipeg branch opened. By December 1898, six more branches were opened in Manitoba. This marked the beginning of two decades of explosive growth in the West. In total, between 1898 and 1910, the Bank of Hamilton would go on to open 128 branches throughout Ontario and Western Canada. By 1928, this number had grown to 152 branches.
Like the other Canadian chartered banks, it issued its own paper money. The Bank of Canada was established through the Bank of Canada Act of 1934 and the banks relinquished their right to issue their own currency.
Read more about this topic: Bank Of Hamilton
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“The beginnings of altruism can be seen in children as early as the age of two. How then can we be so concerned that they count by the age of three, read by four, and walk with their hands across the overhead parallel bars by five, and not be concerned that they act with kindness to others?”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)